‘Who is this kid?’: How Brayden Point’s early years in Calgary shaped his path to NHL stardom

Note: Signed Jersey will not be availble until after August 15th, 2023. 

CALGARY, Alberta — When Brayden Point brought the Stanley Cup to his old community hockey rink in August, he did it his own style.

The local media wasn’t alerted, as this was going to be — like everything else in Point’s life — private. But it was also powerful. Point, 26, having spent part of the day in the backyard of his family’s New Brighton home for a low-key party, showed up in a plain blue T-shirt, blue jeans, a trucker hat and his now infamous camouflage Crocs.

Point walked through the door of one of Cardel Rec Center’s four ice sheets, and everyone in the rink started to clap or cheer. The two youth hockey teams playing, in the 14- or 15-year-old range, didn’t know what to do, but Point urged them to come closer and check out hockey’s holy grail.

The kids got to touch the Cup, talk with Point and take a team photo at center ice. Point did this on all four sheets so everyone could have an opportunity, then took the Cup to another rink before a private party a family friend’s hockey pub Black Swan.

“People still tell stories about it,” said friend and childhood teammate Morgan Klimchuk, a former Flames first-round pick. “The fact he got the Cup and did a tour of the town meant so much to so many people. He made some unplanned stops, and they were a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for people here.

“He’s got a lot of pride in where he came from.”

As Point walked around the rink,  it stirred up memories from the start of his hockey career — the days his dad coached him, his heroics in peewee in bantam, notoriously napping on car rides to tournaments and then scoring hat tricks. Before he became a Stanley Cup champion, a superstar, he cut his teeth in these Calgary rinks.

“In one of the rinks, there were pictures of us when we were in tike, like 6 years old,” Point recalled. “It’s pretty amazing. You think about the time you spent there, the games you had. To bring the Cup there was really special.”